el paquete

What it means

1. 1.

   El paquete semanal: a terabyte of films, series, music, apps, magazines and classified ads, compiled weekly and distributed hand to hand on hard drives and memory sticks. For years it was how most Cubans consumed media, in a country with almost no home internet.

2. 2.

   By extension, any bundle of pirated digital content bought from a local distributor.

Literally: The package.

Examples with translations

• El muchacho de la esquina me trae el paquete los lunes.

  The kid on the corner brings me the weekly package on Mondays.

• Esa serie la vi por el paquete.

  I watched that series off the package.

Where it comes from

A purely descriptive name for a thing that grew from nothing in the late 2000s into a nationwide distribution network with a weekly schedule and its own advertising. It is tolerated rather than legal, and its compilers famously keep out pornography and political material, which is what allowed it to survive.

First attested: around 2008